yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[EVO 4G General] DonutGrunt:
I love Sense

Stock Android's Browser is pretty bad

and so is the stock gallery (why is it so unorganized and takes forever to load a freakin picture)

Sense gallery is neat, organized and loads quickly.
[EVO 4G General] jxr94:
Here is my take;

Sense looks more polished

AOSP looks just "cooler"

I constantly switch between cm7 and stock turbo. They both have there advantages that make them worth having nand backups for.

Op is right, sense is under appreciated and unfairly called slow. The stock turbo rom ricsism put together (mikfroyo and myn too) are just as smooth as cm7. I've even noticed better battery life with the sense rom. But in terms of keyboard, and browser speed, cm7 takes the cake.

My 2 cents
[EVO 4G General] vbetts:
I hate the way Sense is setup, I don't mind the launcher but that's it.
[EVO 4G General] Ryjabo:
I love Sense, except:

1. You can't customize it (colors/themes) without using a custom ROM

2. The Sense messaging app on the Evo2.2 is SLOW as crap, laggy when you're scrolling and such. That's enough to make me not want to use it.

3. Battery life sucks. I'm at 88% at 8 hours unplugged right now, CM7 with Savaged-Zen kernel.
[EVO 4G General] Jjday7:
I totally agree.
[EVO 4G General] akarol:
Hang on... you call this good looking?! That is one of the ugliest screenshots I have seen btw.
[EVO 4G General] rootsquared:
What do you mean by this comment?
[EVO 4G General] akarol:
1. Check out Myn's 2.2 (one of the many themed Sense ROMs out there)

2. Check out Hancent SMS (who uses the stock messaging app?!)

3. Check out Fresh ROM 3.5.0.1 (Best battery life... period!)
[EVO 4G General] aham83:
The sense is a hog. If you get rid of the bloatware from sprint you are sill left with aroun 350mb vs a AOSP that will give you 408mb. Now of course it fuctions better but with the DEV that I have seen on this sight that will not be the issue in the long run.
[EVO 4G General] thegregbradley:
Every aftermarket clock widget that tries to look like sense has awful, low res text in the flip clock boxes. That clock looks like ass. This is the sense clock, it's beautiful:

That being said, I run an AOSP rom because I like customization. It took me THREE MONTHS just to decide that the widgets were BARELY not worth it. HTC makes such gorgeous widgets, I just wish it was a little more open. MAN that HTC clock is lovely. FancyWidget and BeautifulWidgets large clocks look like TRASH by comparison.

However, the beautiful widgets smaller home weather/clock widget looks nice (this is my screen):

(not pretending my desktop is the fairest of them all, just saying... aftermarket clocks always look like ****)
[EVO 4G General] Rydah:
I feel that sense makes the phone what it is.
[EVO 4G General] LZLandingZone:
Wait till the new version of Sense hits the Evo. It might give MIUI a run for its money.
[EVO 4G General] JaiCameron:
If you like sense great,

If you like Cm mazel tov!

How many times must we continue to endure this tired debate........
[EVO 4G General] Vandelay007:
Where did you get those icons?

.........at 8 am today someone poisons the coffee....do not drink the coffee. More instructions will follow.

Cordially,

Future Dwight
[EVO 4G General] DirtyShroomz:
Is this a "post your home screen" thread? I win
[EVO 4G General] ramiss:
I have to agree. The OP says everyone is bashing Sense. If they are I don't see the bashing, just two categories of roms and two groups of people that prefer one over the other.

Sent from my device.
[EVO 4G General] Rippley05:
Some people bash sense, some people bash Aosp. It is what it is.

Most people here just have a preference, that's all. I prefer AOSP because it gives me by far the best battery, most speed and just overall smooth and virtually lag free experience.

That said, I have been itching to try some of the awesome sense roms that are out now, I have been away a long time =p
[EVO 4G General] totalanonymity:
I'm by no means an expert as I've only tried Warm Z, Warm (RLS5), and CM7-RC2 and #30.

CM7 has provided me with better battery life, definitely.

But Warm Z, my oh my, that one has got my heart. It is ridiculously fluid and responsive and absolutely gorgeous.
[EVO 4G General] Crossrocker:
Yes i do call that "good looking" it is to my eyes and its my opinion. Don't have to bash, asshole.

Also, to those saying they like the sense browser.. why.....???? I hate it soo much. You can't search because it always puts a https: and then it goes full screen. Again just my OPINION. Not bashing.

And i don't know why but I find fancy widget with the appearance imbusing to be better then the stock sense.

Ill get those icons tomorrow.

A drop of Chuck Norris's semen was placed on Android OS. We now have CyanogenMod.
[EVO 4G General] sand1303:
I love sense and can't wait for the next one that is on the evo 3d. It doesn't need customizing. It's already clean and pretty.

Sent from my rooted HTC EVO using the xda app!
[EVO 4G General] BrianDigital:
Cause its their opinion, like yours everyone has one........
[EVO 4G General] HipKat:
Give Koni III a shot.

WOW, is all I can say.
[EVO 4G General] tejasrichard:
I hate widgets. Most people's screens look much too cluttered to me. I prefer an empty screen with everything hidden. Swyping is your friend.
[EVO 4G General] OneStepAhead:
Wow, id hate to see your GF because you clearly have no eye for beauty. I'm embarrassed for your Evo.
[EVO 4G General] tejasrichard:
Negative, cowboy. YOU may like it, and that is fine, but to say "it doesn't need customizing" implies that your tastes are good enough for everyone. Screw that noise. This is what I want my homescreen to look like:

Notice the total lack of anything related to Sense UI. Again, I do not like ANY of the sense widgets...including the flip clock.
[EVO 4G General] OneStepAhead:
Never understood that, my mom likes her home screen empty too, I personally want quick access to the things I use frequently.
[EVO 4G General] auau465121:
This really grinds my gears why would anyone buy a sense based phone and hate sense would u buy the iPhone and hate IOS just makes no sense to me go get the nexus s please :mad:
[EVO 4G General] akarol:
I'm not saying that EVERYONE bashes Sense, but one cannot disagree that the majority does. I know that people tend to like whats different and out of the norm, but some times different isn't necessarily better. That's all!

By the way, any ideas on a normal e-mail icon with a unread mail counter for LP+? Or is there really not one? If that's the case, someone needs to make one ASAP. Charge a buck and become rich. :P
[EVO 4G General] akarol:
I'm sorry man... that is ugly as hell. I liked every other screenshot posted in this thread, but yours takes the ugliest screenshot of the decade award. The icons, color, and widget just complement each other perfectly in achieving the highest level of fugliness.
[EVO 4G General] neodorian:
Wow this has really turned into a flame fest.

As for original content, I gave Sense a shot. It was OK. I just tried the last Myn and it was the first time I had used a Sense ROM in a while. I still can't get over how much slower the app launcher is. Everything else seemed OK but Sense always just seems too gaudy and garish to me. Too much gloss on everything. I like a minimal setup that doesn't look cluttered or flashy.

So many themes I see posted on this site look like a teenager's myspace page from 2008. All of these non-matching fonts with random drop-shadows and bevel as if throwing a few photoshop filters on something passes for good design.

Anyway, yeah now I'm being a **** too. I figured this has turned into a rant thread so I might as well get out my stress :D

Not sure why people were saying Crossrocker's screenie was that ugly. The background isn't my style but it's at least relatively clean looking. I would take that any day over stuff like this that you see all over the forum:
[EVO 4G General] galandy:
I also really liked the Sense widgets, but for some reason Sense was slow and even occasionally crashing on my Evo. I switched to GO Launcher EX and couldn't be happier. You can find widgets that are very similar to the Sense ones, the only one i miss i a gallery widget, but other than that I really like GO Launcher EX as well (the unread email/texts counter in icons work as well btw):

Unread mail count:
[EVO 4G General] frontay:
If it ain't Sense, it don't make sense!
[EVO 4G General] abanh:
Sense is more than just the launcher and widgets. I like Sense's contact and calendar integration with Facebook. I also prefer the Sense Dialer, Contacts, and how copy and paste is implemented. I don't use the Sense launcher because you can't change the number of home screens; 7 is just too many.

One thing I don't understand is Aosp users who bash the Sense dialer. The smart search feature makes it so much more functional than the Aosp dialer. Also, people who list Aosp as quicker and have better stability than Sense - I can understand the argument for it being quicker but the stability argument doesn't hold. I like trying out Cyanogen but I don't like always checking to see if there's a wake lock issue.
[EVO 4G General] m4rk0358:
Really? I have an unread counter for email in my version of LP.

And the flip clock is hideous.
[EVO 4G General] Mike Fitz:
Everyone has an opinion, they just don't matter as much as mine.

:D

There are certain things Sense has that work really well, you see an awful lot of "almost as good" copies of plenty of Sense widgets. I miss the scrolling agenda widget when it's not there because it have a lot of meetings at work. I just like being able to quickly scroll throgh and see what my day looks like.

For others, maybe it's the clock, or the gallery, or whatever. It seems like for MOST people there's at least something they secretly like from Sense and wish they had on their aosp ROMS.
[EVO 4G General] DirtyShroomz:
Yeah.. An empty homescreen is kind of annoying, more things to do to get to where I need
[EVO 4G General] selders59:
Here is my two cents. Each their own, I have used both CM and Sense and I prefer Sense. Currently using Dark Cocoa III from 1975jamie here are some screenies and you can see my battery life.
[EVO 4G General] tejasrichard:
Again, that's a big negative cowboy. I can get to any app I use regularly in, at the very most, 2 swipes, and 2 clicks. My most used items are at my finger tips in either: 1 swype (my calc is to the left of home, my music player is to the right), or 1 swype, 1 click. To call someone, I just tap the clock and type the first 2 letters of their name...this is FAR quicker than scrolling through all of my contacts in the contact widget to try to find one person. Now, I realize that 2 swypes and 2 clicks is more actions than clicking an icon on your primary homescreen, but really....how much crap are you cramming into your primary homescreen? Most likely, especially if you are using a flip clock, you are having to stick stuff on multiple screens and, in the end, you are doing just as many actions to get to your stuff as I do to get to mine. At that point, it comes down to aesthetic preference. I like a clean desktop with little on it to distract the eye. I don't want to flip through 5-7 pages of stuff looking for where I stuck a particular icon. That setup just does not play well with the way my mind organizes things. I am not knocking sense or people who use it in any way...it just doesn't work for me, and therefore, has little value FOR ME. When I did use sense, I found myself rarely using the widgets. As I flashed more often, I found myself less and less willing to setup all those screens with stuff I knew I wouldn't be using in a day or two. Finally, I just stopped using them, altogether. The next logical step was AOSP. Darch made my fone fun to use, and I never looked back. When I bought my evo, I didn't flash aosp until they got 4g working (I use my wimax ALL the freakin TIME!), and loved me some vaelpak and mikfroyo, but i always set them up as close to aosp as I could.

And for this guy:

I didn't by a sense-based phone, I bought an Android-based phone made by htc, which happens to use a Sense UI launcher out of the box. You sir, need to take a step back and check which forum you are posting in. We are hackers. We like to take the phone they give us and turn it into something else. I don't understand why someone would join a board about hacking phones and then tell everyone they should just leave it alone and use it the way the way it came, like the manufacturer intended it. Screw that noise. Besides, when I started using android, there was no Nexus S, nor even a Nexus 1. Last I checked, Sprint isn't even selling the nexus line yet, and besides THAT, the newest revision wasn't made by HTC. All of these are very good reasons why I own the Evo, and not the Nexus S. Sense is just a highly integrated launcher that HTC has chosen to force upon you...nothing more, nothing less. If I don't like what they integrated, why should I be forced to use it? I still like the hardware and the underlying OS, so yeah...I think I'll keep on a-hackin my Evo. Thanks.
[EVO 4G General] BrianDigital:
At release what options do sprint users have for a vannila experience with the features of this phone
[EVO 4G General] mikel719:
Any way to get that keyboard?
[EVO 4G General] adamantypants:
I'm personally in LOVE with all the sense widgets, dialers, apps, contacts integration, etc. But mostly I love that even on custom ROMs its stable enough that I don't have to worry about anything going wrong, even though I'm on a SBC kernel, have full HDMI mirroring, amongst other things.

And for my money, it's the most aesthetically pleasing. Again that's just user preference and mine is Sense. And if you say "well just download (insert your favorite alternative)" why not just use Sense? It's a memory hog, but you still can't beat the original. Not to mention most of my Android using friends (not nearly as phone obsessed as me) love the Sense interface too. I love that I have a friend with an Atrix that envies my phone simply because of the interface.
[EVO 4G General] mmegalodon:
Agree with the Sense clock 'alternatives.' They just don't look as good. One you're using is nice but I've found the MIUI weather / clock widget the best replacement. I used to not like the clock, and found it too big and also redundant but I've come around. Other Sense Widgets can be duplicated if necessary.

Sense is by far the best skin and some ROMs have pretty good battery life but not anymore than I ever get with CM. If, at all, its about as on par. Far and wide best skin but nothing beats AOSP. So lite and nice.

MIUI clock for reference. Even looks better than the Sense clock.

blah blah effin blah
[EVO 4G General] tejasrichard:
The only aspect of sense that beats AOSP, IMO, is the dialer...but guess what? Dialer One easily bests the sense dialer. It works virtually identically, and is FAR more easily customized by the end user. Even when I was using sense (before teamwin got 4g working), I was using Dialer One. But I really ought to just withdraw from this thread. I'm not trying to troll you guys, and I'm not interested in trying to convert anyone to AOSP. My only point was that there is no "best" here. AOSP is not "better" than sense, if sense has the features that you want. Sense is not "better" than AOSP if you don't use its features and don't give a fvck about its "integration." So, no, I don't believe that sense is under-appreciated, or that it somehow deserves more credit than it is getting. People like what they like, and use what they want. There are a bunch of people on both sides of this issue who get butt-hurt because someone else disagrees with their choice, when it really shouldn't matter what anyone else thinks. Who cares if the dudes using AOSP think that sense is bogged down and bloated? It doesn't change YOUR experience does it? It sure didn't change the fact that I have no outstanding bugs to complain about when you said

I have zero issues with my rom. None. I don't have to reset my phone all the time, I don't get force-closes, my 4g works everytime I turn it on, and my phone feels lickety-split fast when I use it. But, you gotta use what YOU like, not what I say works on MY phone. I am really in to hifi (my other hobby), and I learned a long time ago that it doesn't matter how many people tell you something rocks, if it doesn't work for YOU, you aren't going to enjoy it. Period.
[EVO 4G General] akarol:
Does Dialer One sync your contact pictures and information with Facebook?!
[EVO 4G General] tejasrichard:
All of my contacts have nifty pics by their names, which I have never added in any fashion except by syncing with facebook, so...yes? Possibly?

Edit: to be fair, I have never checked to see if the contact pics are the same as their current FB pics, so I couldn't say for sure. But again, this is not a case of "mine is better than yours," or even "mine is just as good as yours." You are happy with sense. That means you have a phone in your possession that works the way you want it to. Awesome! Good for you! Why does it matter if I don't like sense? Why is sense not getting enough credit? Cause it doesn't do it for me? Well, sorry bub, but that is just something you are gonna hafta live with. I am not going to give HTC credit for being the end-all and be-all of launchers when I don't give a single crap about using their launcher, nor do I miss any of the features that they brought. This is not a criticism of them or an invalidation of your choice, it simply means my needs are met in a different manner than yours. I couldn't care less if my contacts FB info is up-to-date. The people I give a crap about enough for this to matter, I check in with their wall on a multiple-times-a-day basis. And I normally do it while surfing through the various sites that I visit daily, like XDA, and AK, so having them pop up in friendstream is pointless to me, when I am already online, and never bother to look at the widget in the first place. Why go to my homescreen, swype to the right page, and look at a truncated version of their posts and tweets when I am already online? I am online on my phone roughly 6-8 hours a day. I go through 2.5 GIGS of data per month, with almost no downloads or music streaming. That is just page-loads. I know. It is ridiculous. Point is, I want to interact with my phone differently than Sense allows me to. How much credit am I suppose to give it? And what for? Aesthetics? I don't like them. Widgets? I don't use them. Fb integration? Been there, discussed that. Don't get me wrong, I am not being critical of HTC or Sense, I just don't need what they are offering...and I am not, in the least, critical of folks who want to use their device differently than I do. Have fun in whatever way it makes you happy! Just don't tell me I hafta be wowed or reverential of a launcher I don't care for.
[EVO 4G General] Skellyyy:
What icons are those does anybody know?
[EVO 4G General] Award Tour:
AOSP kernels has been benched to have the lowest power draw of any kernel. There's really no disputing that. It also has the highest performance benchmarks.

On a design side, both Sense and AOSP are pretty horrible. Scratch that. Sense is horrible, AOSP is just plain and slightly ugly. The HTC designers got way too happy with the lens flare Photoshop filter and threw in gradients in places for absolutely no reason. They also have absolutely no grasp of proper spacing. Their lists are a absolute disaster. Graphically, Sense is a mix of not as good and dark iOS elements, cliche high school level design treatment, and a general lack of layout sense. Its badly designed and I just can't put myself to using it.
[EVO 4G General] ECrispy:
Which version are you talking about? WarmZ already has Sense 2.0 and tbh, I don't see much of a difference. But then again I don't mind Sense.

This has turned into a screenshot flamefest, but to get back to OP's point -

- HTC Sense is easily the best oem frontend, it makes Motoblur and Samsung's efforts look like the crap they are.

- Sense has by far the best, most rock solid contacts implementation with syncing to FB - no other rom gets even close. All your contact details, updates, pictures are linked and joined seamlessly. You will not find better integration unless you use WP7.

- Sense is rock solid. Blame Sprint for the bundled bloatware, not HTC. The mulitple home screens, pinch to zoom etc are all innovations.

- I believe the animated weather effects and flipclocks are also HTC inventions from way back when it was TouchFlo and earlier.

- I have yet to see any proof that Sense is slow. Sure it takes up more resources than AOSP, but is just as fluid and responsive.
[EVO 4G General] akarol:
I agree 100% with you.

I'm on LP+ now and there is no way that the homescreens are faster than Sense. The app drawer might be.
[EVO 4G General] tejasrichard:
There is no "proof." There are just people and their experiences. My phone "feels" much quicker than it did before. TO ME. Is it placebo? Could be. HTF should I know? I don't have the equipment needed to measure the differences in response in milliseconds, and frankly, I don't think very many others here do, either. Also, Our phones have proven to have vastly different HW capabilities. I, for instance, cannot run ANY netarchy-based kernel. Every single one starts causing screen-tearing and force-closes within 8 hours of install, and within 24 hours, must either be reflashed or replaced, or my browser becomes unusable. Why? I have no clue. It sucks, because they all start out working great! It is just something I had to come to terms with. And yes, I tried every variation as they came out, and messed with every setting I could think of. No dice.
[EVO 4G General] Award Tour:
Sense sticks a bunch of freaking XML into my Google contacts to sync Social data. That's freaking bad thinking and pissed me off like no other. Spent a ton of time deleting all that crap from my Google account.

Sense IS SLOWER. Not only are lists badly designed from a visual sense, but they are badly designed from a logical sense. They dumped (and even overlayed over each other) a bunch of graphical assets/resources. When I first got my EVO I spent the first two months trying to reskin Sense to perform and look decent. Their XML layouts were a nightmare. White assets over other white assets. All that graphical junk slows list scrolling in their messaging/contact apps. Such a mess.
[EVO 4G General] aimbdd:
It has sense 3.
[EVO 4G General] lost_man10002:
Its kool but sense isn't my cup of tea just my opinion

sent from my cyanogenized evo 4g
[EVO 4G General] k2buckley:
I think he was talking about the new sense that will be on the Evo3D. I'm not sure what version it actually is, but it's not the same as Sense 2.0, that you'll find in WarmZ. From watching the youtube videos, of the Demos for the Evo 3D, it is clear that it is a newer version of sense. It has like carousel scrolling of the homescreens, totally different and customizeable lockscreen(s), and some other different features that you could see from the youtube videos. I'm sure we will learn more about it in the near future, but it definitely looked way sweeter than any version of sense I've played with yet.

Personally, I like using Sense and AOSP. I'm not partial to one or the other. I flash between Sense roms and AOSP roms constantly, and like aspects and features of both. It honestly depends on what kind of mood I'm in. And honestly, I've never gotten upset with the 'speed' of sense. Sure, AOSP may be a bit quicker than Sense, but that's to be expected, look at the difference in size of the actual ROM. Sense still always runs quick and smooth for me, I've never gotten upset with it, as it never lags or anything, in my experiences.

I'm just happy to have so many options. Have you guys noticed how many new ROMs have been dropping in the Dev section? I can't even keep up with trying them all. Every time I flash one, a new one drops, and I can't stop myself from flashing the next one. We're just lucky to have so many different options for our phone. There are flavors for everyone's taste.
[EVO 4G General] grouse130:
Who cares??? At least we have options thanks to some awesome devs. Use which ever one suits you best.